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Latest News

Agas and Luxury Italian Properties

The past few months have seen some very interesting projects grace the 27-inch screens of our Macs.

Local family-run business Avec Cookers have been renovating Aga cookers for over 2 decades. They approched us redeisgn their online presence to incorpotate their new brand and create a highly search-engine optimised site that would improve their already strong google position.

Bella Vista are a specialist property sales company that market luxury Italian lake-side villas. They required a new website to showcase their current properties for sale in a striking and elegant way. So we decided to incorporate impressive scalable and animating full-screen photography on the homepage to really sell the dream. No small technical feat but when you have such stunning photography you might aswell make the most of it!

We have been working closely with The Fold to launch their online campaign to showcase and sell their Spring/Summer collection of women's workwear. As well as refreshing their website with all their latest photography and studio shots, the online store was completely redesigned to accomadate catwalk videos, which now accompany all of their products.

A to Z of Web Design

It's been an incredibly busy start to 2011 with the launch of 2 very different sites with coincedentally similar domains. A-Z Dogs offers trained dogs for TV, film, photography and theatre, whilst A2Z School of English is one of Manchester's leading English Language school. In addition to the similar naming convention both sites use our favourite content management system Drupal. A smattering of 3rd party modules provide enhanced functionality, interactivity and features.

Festive Finale

The festive period is approaching fast and we'll be shutting up shop soon so we'd just like to take this opportunity to wish all our visitors and clients the merriest of Christmases and all the very best for the New Year!

The end of our year sees the launch of a couple of our new sites - Cherry Tree Gifts, a magento-powered online store for a popular gift shop in Knutsford and Scratching Shed Publishing, a Wordpress site for a small publishers who produce a range of books with a 'Northern English flavour'.

Pixel Air turns 3 years old!

It's been three whole years since Pixel Air launched and we're proud to have reached such an important milestone. Things have come a long way since the early days both in location and form. Our only recently opened Altrincham-based studio is going from strength to strength and we're really looking forward to the next three exciting years! To mark this occasion we feel it's high time for a redesign of our website. The design is already underway so keep an eye on this spot for a fresh site launching soon...

New Team Member!

A big welcome to Andrew, the newest member of our expanding team! Andrew brings with him years of experience as a talented designer and front-end developer with a penchant for JQuery and CSS3!

We've moved!

Our design studio has moved down the road into new premises in Atrincham. The new office is bigger, lighter and only a short tram ride to Manchester town centre. Our telephone number has also changed and we've updated it throughout the site.

3 Months Later...

Has it been 3 months already since our last news update?!! If anything, that goes to show how incredibly busy we've been. Neglectful of updating the site? Guilty. Lazy? Not a chance. So as a reward for your patience (those that check our news feed daily!) here are a few links to our most recent websites.

Firstly we redesigned the front-end of a small drupal website for a couple of churches in Halstead, in Kent. The site has quite a few regular visitors and a dedicated community behind it, so we wanted to make sure the redeisgn improved the overall usability and information architecture.

Then there is a Ada & Ina, an online store, newly redeveloped, selling linen fabrics. The new site boasts the ability to order made-to-measure curtains and blinds. Simply select your fabrics, choosing your heading, lining and enter a few measurements. Couldn't be simpler.

Finally, we redesigned and redeveloped a brand new website for online optician Vision2You. Now with a fresh clean look and an even easier way to order your prescription glasses.

We will be updating the homepage and portfolio with visuals as soon as possible.

Happy New Year

2009 was a great year for us and no doubt 2010 will be even better! It's already off to a flying start with a couple of newly launched websites. Optimised IT, a local IT support company now have a shiny new website to showcase their plethora of services and we've also just redesigned a joomla-powered website for Motivating Mum, offering business mentoring and coaching for start ups.

Childcare and Music Therapy

This month sees the launch of 2 new websites: A drupal-powered website for Ealing Music Therapy, a charity offering music therapy to children with learning difficulties. Pixel Air were proud to be chosen to design and build their well deserved but long overdue website. The organisation now has a digital outlet to talk about all the great work they're doing and how music therapy can benefit all children.

Secondly we have Play Days Nurseries who came to us with a clear requirement - to update their existing website to more accurately reflect their fun and playful brand and oganisation. The new website uses a big and bold user interface that clearly highlights their child-care services and nursery locations.

Another 3 satisfied clients

October has been a busy month indeed with the launch of 3 newly redesigned websites. Firstly there is the new wordpress-powered website for childrens entertainers The Action Station, who provide everything you could ever need to liven up your kids' parties, from mermaid storytellers to juggling clowns.

Then we have WM Project, specialists in high-end residential refurbishments and redevelopments and who can now showcase their incredibly impressive properties on their new Wordpress website.

Finally we're very proud to present the new and improved website for Jane Asher Party Cakes, who hired us to revamp their online store and make browsing their hundreds of sugarcraft products a piece of cake (no pun intended!). We'll be posting a case study on the redesign shortly.

Writing for Freelance Alliance

Our designer Alex has had his first feature published on the Freelance Alliance website. Under the all-encompassing banner of 'This Month in Design' Alex discusses Google Chrome Frame, contract 'do's and don'ts' and common Photoshop mistakes. Read the article here..

24 months and counting

The end of september saw Pixel Air turn 2 years old! Despite the current financial climate, we've been very fortunate to be able to say that our 2nd year has been very successful for us. We've worked with many fantastic clients over the past year and on a range of incredibly varied briefs that have kept us on our toes. Our 3rd year is already off to a flying start with a handful of very promising projects kicking off as we speak!

Double Drupal launch

We launched two new drupal websites this month. The first is for Wole Training - a promotional website for personal trainer, fire-fighter and amatuer boxer Wole Adesemoye - winner to BBC's Last Man Standing. And secondly Love Salsa, a small business offering private and group salsa lessons. They hope the new website to eventually grow to become a portal for all things salsa in London.

Next month will see the launch of Jane Asher's newly redesigned online sugarcraft store - for all you baking and cake-decorating enthusiasts out there! Not to mention Pixel Air turns 2 years old!

Looking for local freelancers

We're looking for talented and enthusiastic local freelance web designers to help out with new and exciting projects. Full job descriptions can be found here.

Featured in Digital Arts Magazine

This month's edition of Digital Arts magazine has an interview with our very own Alex Peterson. View PDF of the article.

Stay tuned for loads of new and exciting projects launching soon. The best way to stay updated is to follow us on twitter.

Weddings Singers and Psychologists

A few newly launched websites worthy of mention in the shape of The Luxe Cinema and Kate Westall as well as a couple of redesigns for Beez Kneez and Vivamus Psychologists. Portfolio section in the process of being updated.

Web Standards Article

As we seem to be talking about Web Standards a lot of the time with new clients we thought it best to write a short article explaining the benefits of Web Standards and why those pesky table-based website are bad for business and the web in general! Read More...

Seasons Greetings

A belated Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all and wishing you the very best for 2009!

Inspirational

Elite By Design have written a blog post listing their 30 Most Inspirational Business Websites. One of them being Cad & The Dandy!

Featured in .net magazine

Cad & The Dandy has been featured in the Readers' Websites section of January's edition of .net magazine.

View a scan of the here (PDF 1.5mb)

NEW - Get a FREE quote online

Do you have a potential project for us and would like a quote? Well, you can now fill out our online Quote Request Form and we'll get back to you with a few suggestions along with a quote.

The form may seem long, but they're all very relevant and the more we know about your project the more options we can provide you with for a suitable solution and of couse a more accurate quote.

New section - 'Identity'

We've just added a new sub-section to the Portfolio area for all our corporate identity work. Take me there now!

1st Birthday!

It's felt like 5 minutes, but we kid you not, it's been one whole solid financial year! We can't believe it either. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun debugging CSS and thinking up new AJAX interaction.

We'd like to thank all our wonderful clients who have kept us busy and amused over the past year. We're extremely lucky to be where we are today, feeling a lot wiser, more experienced and ready to tackle all the new and exciting oppotunities the next year will have in store!

Relocation

The studio now has a new home in leafy Cheshire! We recently relocated to the historic town of Knutsford, just southwest of Manchester. Famous for Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Cranford and the Tatton Flower show.

Thanks to the flexible working nature of the web design world, business is as usual, with a few fresh websites launching and many exciting projects in the pipeline.

If you're a regular viewer of BBC Three you may have watched Britain's missing top model. We recently launched a new website for Love Productions the TV company behind this series and a few others, notably Young Mums' Mansion, Filthy Rich and Homeless and Cirque De Celebrité.

If you're planning a visit to Gibralter any time soon we highly recommend dropping in to our friends at the Savannah Lounge, a newly opened bar and restaurant on the island. More info on their new website of course!

Hectic

A bunch of new websites painstakingly designed and proudly launched - links above. We've had such a busy couple of months so the news section has been a little neglected.

The long awaited @media 2008 is this thursday and friday - looking forward to sitting back and indulging in a few days of pure web geekery.

Soon to lauch is our biggest and most challenging website to date - watch this space.

And Alex is still one of Prickie's top sellers...

Conference fever

We've bought our tickets to @media 2008 - only the best annual web design and development conference! Very excited indeed. Plenty of fantastic speakers sharing their in-depth knowledge and experience. The @media website features various speakers' podcasts - a taste of what the event will have to offer so definately worth a listen.

We recently launched a newly designed website for T.P.C.M insurance- a small firm specialising in landlords insurance, based in Brighton - hence the colourful image of beach houses along the sea-front. The website has all the usual bits you'd expect form an insurance website such as an online quotation facility.

Happy New Year

As you can see the website has taken on more of a blue tone to give it new vibrancy for 2008! The New Year has already brought with it a plethora of new and exciting projects. Some of which you should she going live over the coming weeks.

We recently launched The Open Space website. A new business skills training company with a twist. Not to mention taking care of the logo design and branding.

Freelance work opportunity - if you've had any experience designing or developing for Drupal then we'd really like to hear from you.

Designers Needed

A quick monthly update. With the projects piling in it looks as though this Christmas will be spent not only tucking into mince pies but also debugging code and battling server issues - did anyone else experience the recent frustrating problems with (mt) and BT Internet? Inconceivable.

Only one noteworthy launch this month being West London Promotions, a local distribution company, who's website received the Web Standards treatment.

In the new year we'll hopefully be looking to take on a pair of freelance hands to help out with a few exciting projects. If you can write semantic code with your eyes shut and have a passion for producing funtional and smart looking websites then why not send us an Email. Any Drupal experience also a bonus.

A Flying Start

I can't believe it's been a whole month already. It's seems like so much has happened in so little time. Client web design work has been coming in thick and fast and there are plenty of exciting projects lined up for the next couple of months, so overall it's been a very promising start for us!

A couple of websites will be launching very soon - Dylan Harrison's online portfolio of impressive advertising work and also the interactively rich Savannah Lounge website. Both use new features that we've been keen to implement such as flash video and a streaming music player. With UK broadband connectivity almost 90%(!) there's more reason to offer media rich content to your audience.

It all Begins

After countless iterations, grid layouts, font styles and tiled background images the website is finally launched! And No doubt plenty more changes and tweaks will be implemented along the way.

Welcome to all! It's been a long time in the planning and hopefully this will be the start of something really quite remarkable. Seeing as you've got this far please feel free to stay a while and browse our recent work. If you're here looking for highly creative web design and development then call us and we'll be happy to discuss your digital design needs!